


take it easy on my heart

by smilebackwards



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 14:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11899347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smilebackwards/pseuds/smilebackwards
Summary: Tap. Tap. Tap.The red tip of a cane hits the doorframe and then there’s Matt, back in an NYPD Harlem t-shirt, standing in the doorway.





	take it easy on my heart

**Author's Note:**

> For [this](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/9408.html?thread=17891776#cmt17891776) prompt.

The waiting is the worst. Sitting in a tight conference room with fear-gripped strangers and stale coffee, pictures of limp bodies and C-4 up on a corkboard for ambiance. 

There’s a police dispatch radio on one of the desks. Foggy turns it on and flips through the frequencies. He’s seen Brett do it often enough to get the gist and some of the shortand. 

The others drift over: Karen first, then Jessica’s friends. Foggy recognizes Trish Walker from a billboard outside his office. And maybe from a crush over a decade ago. They all look at each other with nervous eyes. Foggy doesn’t think any of them really expect this to end well.

For awhile it’s “Two suspects, one male, one female, on foot” and “Lost them. Negative, no visual” then there’s shouting and swearing and a confusion of “Team One, breaching the building” and “Hands up! Hands in the air! Now!”

“I’m sorry,” someone says, calm, almost inaudible. “I can’t let this happen.”

A new voice, urgent. “10-33.” _Emergency,_ Foggy thinks. _All-purpose get-the-fuck-out-now emergency._ “10-33. All officers evacuate. Evacuate. 10-33. Midland Circle.”

Crashes and glass shattering and car alarms subside to silence and static. 

Foggy’s hands hurt. He consciously unclenches his fists. Midland Circle is only twenty blocks from the station. Matt will be back soon to tell the whole story.

“Soon” starts to approach the hour mark. 

Foggy has stress-eaten three leftover donuts from a pink bakery box and talked himself down from a panic attack. The station is practically deserted aside from the desk sergeant who gave Foggy an ETA of ten minutes on the return team half an hour ago. It’s all hands on deck on the street.

A door bangs open and closed. Voices. Foggy feels frozen to the floor.

He watches Jessica come in through the conference room door and head straight to Trish and Malcolm. Claire and Luke barely make it into the room, lowering themselves slowly onto the hard pleather waiting chairs looking bloody and winded. Danny Rand—billionaire Danny Rand—and Colleen walk in with their heads down.

There’s a beat of silence. Two beats. Three. Matt isn’t coming through the door.

Karen grips Foggy’s arm tight.

 _Matt,_ Foggy thinks, _do not do this to me. Do_ not. He stares at the horizontal stripe on the wall of the hallway, the sharp drop between taupe and blue.

Matt has never been easy on Foggy’s heart. Foggy used to wait up nights in their dorm room, re-reading the same page of tort law over and over, worrying that Matt missed the WALK indicator tone crossing Amsterdam, until he finally got wise to Matt’s secret study carrel on the third floor of Diamond and started dragging him out by midnight.

“Sorry,” Matt used to say, every time for months, his face expressive with surprise, “I didn’t think— I didn’t realize you’d care.”

 _It’s three o’clock in the morning, Matt,_ Foggy thinks nonsensically. _Come home._

 _Tap. Tap. Tap._ The red tip of a cane hits the doorframe and then there’s Matt, back in an NYPD Harlem t-shirt, standing in the doorway. He’s not wearing his glasses and his eyes look lost. The hand not holding his cane is outstretched in the way that Foggy thinks means he’s blind from sensory overload. Foggy’s starting to retranslate Matt, slow but steady, now that he has all the pieces. 

“Foggy?” Matt says.

Foggy unfreezes. He reaches out for Matt’s wrist and pulls him forward into a crushing hug. “Way to make the dramatic entrance, Murdock,” Foggy says, gripping Matt close. He smells like stale water and cordite, blood.

Karen’s arms come up around their backs, her chin on their contiguous shoulders.

“Sorry,” Matt says into Foggy’s ear. “I had to go change.”

Foggy laughs so he doesn’t cry. “Yeah. Yeah, that was probably a good idea.”

“Your heart is beating really loudly,” Matt says, concerned.

Foggy isn’t surprised Matt can hear it. It probably sounds like a goddamn snare drum to him. Foggy can feel it thundering away in his chest, a repetitive circle of relief and sudden, irrational fear. It was close; Foggy knows that from the way everyone’s holding onto each other, the stark red of blood on Colleen’s sweatshirt, the faint sound of phones ringing off the hook in the bullpen. And because he knows Matt. 

“Well, I was really worried, buddy,” Foggy says. He checks that there are no cops around and lowers his voice. “What happened down there?”

“There were a lot of ninja,” Matt says, a sentence that Foggy can now accept with startling equanimity. 

“And a dragon,” Danny adds, and okay, that one’s a little tougher to swallow.

“A dragon,” Foggy says, flatly. “What is this, Game of Thrones?”

“This is bullshit is what it is,” Jessica says. “And it had better be over.”

Luke leans forward on his chair. “The dragon was dead. I just want to be clear. No one punched a dragon tonight. It was a skeleton, like dinosaur bones.”

Foggy feels a bit better, although not appreciably. He lets Matt go, just a little, hands still anchored to his shoulders, so he can check him over for injuries. 

There’s a dark bruise on Matt’s jaw that will probably take up half his face when it’s done forming. The outsides of his forearms have cuts on them that made it even through the suit. 

Jessica blows out a breath. “So we got Danny back and we’re escaping from this ridiculous dragon skeleton and devil may care here tell us he’ll be fine, grab the next elevator out of hell.” Matt makes a face at her. “Hey, I didn’t promise anything about not telling your friends.”

“Elektra was still down there,” Matt says, low, and that explains pretty much everything except why he left. 

“Jessica told me quote-unquote ‘don’t be a dumbass’,” Matt says sounding both fond and vaguely offended. Foggy’s glad he made a new friend. He’s especially glad that Matt made a new take-no-shit friend.

“Matt looked indecisive about the whole staying alive issue, so I threw him over my shoulder and we got ourselves out of there before the building blew,” Luke adds.

Two new take-no-shit friends. It’s like Foggy won the lottery.

“Thank you,” Foggy says. His throat feels tight. He’s not going to cry. This is over. New York is still standing. Everyone’s alive. They won. 

Foggy grabs Matt into another hug. It could have gone wrong so easily.

Matt’s hand against his back is a soothing weight. “It’s okay,” Matt says, quiet. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are loved. If you want to yell about this show with me, I'm on [tumblr](https://smilebackwards.tumblr.com/).


End file.
